A staunch ally of Chancellor Gordon Brown, he has been the subject of persistent speculation about his cabinet position. And the Public and Commercial Services' Union recently dubbed him the "smiling assassin" when a leaked memo from his department appeared to advise civil service bosses to "smile" as they informed 30,000 staff they were being made redundant.
In the meantime, however, it's been business as usual. And the business on the agenda includes an extension of the New Deal programme aimed at helping disadvantaged young people most at risk of dropping out of mainstream provision for learning, accommodation and employment (see News, p2).
Smith calls the initiative New Start, and New Start centres will be piloted in two local authority areas from October. Run in close conjunction with The Foyer Federation, the programme is based on an American scheme called Job Corps, which has been around for 40 years and engages 60,000 disadvantaged 16- to 24-year-olds a year across 48 states.
Smith insists that he is not copying Job Corps, which has its origins in President Lyndon B Johnson's "War on Poverty" in the 1960s. But he says there is "a lot that we can learn from it".
Job Corps' 119 centres offer a second chance to young people who haven't succeeded in mainstream provision.
Potential participants are referred from a wide range of organisations.
They undergo evaluation and interviews before starting the schemes and there tend to be more applications than places.
At least 80 per cent of participants live in residential centres, with an average stay of eight months. The US scheme costs about 9,000 a head.
"It's won support across the political spectrum and it's popular in communities as well," says Smith. "It encouraged us to explore a role for centres in England with residential accommodation to help young people escape from bad backgrounds."
Smith says New Start centres grew out of a feeling from New Deal delivery partners, personal advisers and participants that a flexible approach would be more responsive to people's needs.
Through schemes such as the New Deal for Musicians, New Deal personal advisers can draw on tailored modules of support that individuals need to move forward into employment.
New Start centres are an extension of this personalised, tailored approach.
The idea follows an exchange in March and April this year between Job Corps programmes in the US, and New Deal for Young People programmes in England.
Smith believes the sharp reduction in long-term youth unemployment means a higher proportion of young people entering New Deal are harder to help, which means advisers need to be able to take a different approach.
New Deal will retain its mandatory requirement, although no-one will be forced to attend a New Start centre.
But the model is designed to be more responsive to young people - and, ultimately, to business needs as well.
The minister says the pilot schemes will continue on an ongoing basis, assuming they prove successful. They will then be reviewed after one or two years to assess the viability of rolling out New Start centres in other areas.
The resources for the two pilot centres have been allocated from existing Department for Work and Pensions budgets. Funding for a further roll-out of the initiative would be considered in 2006, as part of the next government spending review.
"There are a number of young people who have had a bad deal in one way or another," explains Smith. "We need to offer them the chance to start afresh."
FYI
- Andrew Smith has been the MP for Oxford East since 1987. He lives on the Blackbird Leys estate
- He became minister for employment, welfare to work and equal opportunities in 1997
- After a stint in the Treasury, he became secretary of state for work and pensions in 2002.
